Progress on Health Innovation Challenge Fund projects highlighted

A report from the Department of Health and the Wellcome Trust has highlighted the progress being made on the development of innovative medical technologies with support from the Health Innovation Challenge Fund.

Pioneering gene therapies and new medical devices are being developed in the UK using funding from the scheme, with the aim of improving NHS treatment standards in key areas.

Projects include a videogame that can be played at home by stroke patients in order to help monitor recovery rates, a new treatment for a hereditary type of blindness called choroideraemia and a totally automated blood pressure monitoring system.

The fund was set up in 2009 with the aim of stimulating the delivery of products and interventions with potential clinical applications in the NHS within a five-year time frame.

Professor Dame Sally Davies, chief medical officer and chief scientific adviser at the Department of Health, said: "The Health Innovation Challenge Fund … plays an important role by targeting areas of unmet – or poorly met – health needs, in areas where there have been few developments or slow improvements."

Preliminary applications for the fund will continue to be accepted until September 2013.